Me And Alan McGhee (and Bill Prince)

A few months ago, the two Roberts (Lilley and Tinkler) brought
the newly signed Weather Prophets to a poorly attended Guildhall.
A couple of weeks later they promoted a gig at the Sea Cadet Hall
featuring The Wishing Stones and Biff Bang Pow! Alan McGhee is
another link between these two events, he is a member of Biff
Bang Pow! and manages the Weather Prophets as well as running
Creation and Elevation Records.

Talking to Alan by the Cam prompted me to ask him about that
wet skeleton in his cupboard, H2O. "I'm glad someone's finally
brought this up as I keep on seeing it in the gossip columns. I
was in the group from Feb to May 1978, it's now 1987 and people
still say to me 'you were in H2O' and unbeknown to anybody else
the guitarist out of Lloyd Cole And The Commotions was in H2O.
Lots of famous people were in H2O, but I was in it for 3 months,
9 years ago and yet it haunts me. At that particular point they
were into the New York Dolls, they were not trying to be Young
Americans, David Bowie... The band started wearing make-up and
things and I just thought 'this isn't for me' so I left."

Shortly after leaving H2O Alan formed a band, The Laughing
Apple, and moved to London. "We were fed up because the Glasgow
scene was so cliquey and at that point there was no Primal Scream,
there was no Jesus And Mary Chain (JAMC), it was just like shit. The
best you could get were the Cuban Heels and they were dire. I
came down to London in 1979 because I was interested in punk and
I wanted to come to England to do music. I played in The Laughing
Apple for 2 years and we released 3 singles that did absolutely
nothing, on our own label." One of the other members of The
Laughing Apple is Andrew who plays in Biff Bang Pow!, The
Revolving Paint Dream and Primal Scream. Strangely enough all
these bands are signed to Alan's Creation label. "We were running
a club called The Living Room, and that was getting quite
successful but it started properly when I took a £1000 bank loan.
Creation really got going at the beginning of 1984, we put out
one single before then and it died (The Legend!, `'73 in '83`).
It took me about a year to recover all the money. Jerry Thackeray
(The Legend!) went into a sulk for about a year because he didnae
become a pop star through it." To date Creation has released 41
singles and 15 LP's. "We lost money in the first two years, not
huge amounts, maybe about 20 grand or something. You've got to
remember that I managed the JAMC, I got more than £20000 out of
that. The money I made as a manager funded the indulgences of all
the groups I liked, but finally Creation, in its third year of
business, is starting to make money."

All the Creation acts have an image of being leather clad
tough guys. "Everybody thinks its me telling people what to wear,
I don't tell people what to wear or anything. My favourite groups
are the Doors and Iggy and stuff like that, and you tend to wear
what your heroes wear. It's pretty shallow I know but there you
go. I think the leather thing is really made too much of. Every
so often it comes up in interviews and I keep on thinking maybe
we should stop wearing leather, but why should we? because we all
like it.

A strong smell of hype pervaded the release of 'Chernobyl
Baby' by Baby Amphetamine on Creation. "What it was, I went into
the Virgin Megastore and I'd seen these girls and I just thought
it'd be a funny idea to get them to sing on a heavy metal hip hop
record. It was just a sense of humour sort of thing. I don't know
what they're doing now, maybe they are making more records. It
was never a serious group, they were just dumbo's basically. They
were really thick and it was just a good laugh to do it."

"Elevation came about because Creation wasn't getting into the
charts and we had to try to sort it out because I'm limited in
the funding that I've got. At that time I'd just put 'Some Candy
Talking' in the chart through Warners and they basically decided
to give me my own record company." So why set up a new label?
"I'd like to think Elevation would last a long time and be really
good but I wouldn't ever risk Creation to Warners because
Creation's too precious. Major record companies are so fickle
that in three years time I could be out of favour. In 20 years
time I still intend to be doing Creation. Elevation will last as
long as Warners are willing to fund it. I wanted to spend 30
grand making the Weather Prophets album, I dinnae have 30 grand
but Warners did and they gave me the money."

"Every major, Go! Discs and Mute and all the others are all
just basically channels for records to come out whereas Creation
is quite idealistic. No matter how much people laugh at me, I am
trying to change peoples perception of pop music. I want to get
away from production standards. I agree that there should be
producers and that records should be produced to a certain
extent, but not to the extent that they are in the 80's,that's
just disgusting. That's why I think American music is in a lot of
ways healthier than English music. Groups like REM and the
Replacements come away from produced sounds and that's what
hopefully Creation is about. It's produced cleanly and clearly
but its not overproduced, it's no clinical. It's hard to pinpoint
our ideals, but it's basically honesty, that goes through the
music to the people involved with the label." The reason Creation
has such a high media profile compared with other similarly
successful labels is that it has two publicity officers and
spends £1000 a month on record pluggers. Some people would regard
pluggers as a rather unethical extravagance. "I'd defend it to
the death. It's a completely ludicrous idea that you've got to
pay someone to take your records up to a DJ to play them, but
that's the reality. Whether Creation employs one or doesn't it
would still happen. It would just mean that we wouldn't get our
records played. That's one of the things I've set out to stop and
destroy. The thing is I can only stop things like that when I've
got more power. When I was managing the JAMC, support groups
always got full use of the PA. I'm not going to name the group
because I like them, but their manager, if you're supporting
them, gives you 50% use of the PA. That to me is fucking
horrible, a cliched early 70's attitude. The reason I can say
that people were getting 100% when I managed the JAMC was because
I was in charge of that situation. If my record company does get
big enough, if it gets so much money that they cannae stop, I'll
try to change it. At the moment I don't mean anything, because my
turnover is not even a million pounds a year."

"I'm a thorn, the music business does not love me..."

Top of the bill band, The Wishing Stones, are fronted by Bill
Prince a one time music journalist (under the name Bill Black)
and ex-member of The Loft. Whilst Pete Astor, similarly ex-The
Loft, is enjoying the limelight as the leader of The Weather
Prophets with major label backing, Bill is still releasing
records on his own indie label, Head Records.

"The Wishing Stones have been going since last September. We
did a single called 'Beat Girl' and we've just released another
one called 'News Ways'. We did a few dates last year on the back
of the first single culminating with a support for Felt at the
Boston Arms. Then in the new year we got the nationwide
Microdisney support. We laid low for a bit, recorded the single
and we've just come out to start promoting it now. It's quite a
short time and we've done a fair amount. The drummer, John
Rills, I met in connection with another band which quite
fortuitously split up just as mine was forming although I take no
blame for that. They were called The Servants." Karen O'Keefe, on
bass was found by Jeff Baron (Wishing Stones manager and co-owner
of Head Records) "who suggested she would be good and she was. We
had a guitarist, Seft, who was on the single we've just recorded
and did all the dates up until these. He is now departed and a
chap called John Niven, from Scotland and a band Celebrate Texas,
is standing in as permanently as we can make it but obviously
he's got commitments to his own band. He's doing these dates with
us and we'll play it by ear and see how realistic it is to have
him. I'd be happy for him to work on an almost part-time basis. I
write all the stuff and we can rehearse and record as three but
we obviously need a 4th member for live gigs."

So how did Head Records come about? "This band the Servants
was the first release. Literally the label was formed to put a
record out by them. They were seen and were seen to be good and
it was ridiculous that they weren't signed. They weren't on vinyl
and so many other bands were for no apparent reason. So we did
that and it just seemed like a good idea at the time. Since then
we've had a record out by a Glasgow band, The Submarines, two
Wishing Stones singles and there are a couple of things in the
pipeline." Since the interview Head have released a single by
Loop. Bill is a member of Head almost "by default, in the sense
that Jeff and I saw the Servants and he was keen to set up a
label. At that stage I wasn't keen to record, I was basically
having a years sabbatical writing songs. I can see how it would
look like: get Jeff to set up a label and I'd be made when its
time to record. I can honestly say that that wasn't a great
motivator, The Servants were the greatest motivator. Now I really
am a sleeping partner and Jeff does all the legwork." Does it
make money? "Does anything make money, no. We are just juggling
money the whole time. There is no direct financial input now,
certain things get paid for by the distributors but that's not
enough to keep the ball rolling. It's just ticking over, but
that's nice because we're not in it for the money, but it'd be
nice to have some. With a lot of independent labels it's 'let's
get a roster, then we can put out a compilation LP and get a
licensing deal' we never had that sort of gang mentality. It was
like, 'is that a good song, yeah, let's put it out' and if we
don't put out another record by them, so what? And so far, and
I'm keen to keep this up for as long as we possibly can because I
don't see it being done a great deal anywhere else in London and
that is debut releases by bands. It makes your job a million
times harder because you have to sell each band from scratch."
Who are you selling to? "To people who are not satisfied with
something that's been recorded cheaply for the sake of it and
packaged cheaply for the sake of it. There's a lot of inverted
snobbery about it, that it's somehow more valid because it's
crude. The bottom line is the song, we don't have any high
faluting ideas about what the bands should be saying or anything
like that, that's up to them, but it has to be said with a
certain panache I think."

Is there any reason why all the bands so far featured on Head
have been 'guitar bands'? "The sort of bands that play gigs tend
to be guitar bands because its simpler and they're the sort of
records I listen to. We'd love to find the new Suicide or anybody
who works in any sort of unorthodox way but as most of the bands
we like and see are guitar bands that's the way its gone."

The break up of The Loft:"It was a funny period as 'Up The
Hill And Down The Slope' had done the 'business' as they say and
there was a lot of serious interest. I must admit that the
chronology of events around that time are a bit blurred but there
was one major talking seriously. They wanted to play a typically
cunning major label gambit which was for us to release a third
independent single. They said 'don't worry we'll pick it up after
three weeks and if you don't believe us we'll give you the money
for it now'. So they get the kudos of picking up on a hot
independent band without the risk if it stiffed a big one after
one week. We were too busy splitting up."

"We get called Sixties revivalists, told rock is dead and
asked why we are doing this when we could be making rap records
and using drum machines. Actually I think its quite a revolutionary
approach these days to actually write a song and not rely on
a cracking drum beat. People point records to me, Wiseblood and
Foetus and things like that, and say that's really different
music and I say no it's not because if you just peel it all back
it's 5 Star underneath. The safety net of that modern dance sound
is there that will always catch them no matter what they do over
the top of it. When you don't take the prevailing safety net you
open yourself up to all sorts of, usually revivalist, criticism.
It's not some sort of bowing down to the god of Sixties guitar
music. It's the actual sound I like, it's the approach I like."

"What I enjoy most is writing songs that stand up on their
own. I can play them at home and satisfy myself with them in
their barest, crudest form, record them in a painstaking manner
and go out and completely trash them. it worries me when people
start talking in depth about the sacrosanct nature of the song.
If they're any good they're strong enough to take a bit of a
battering, so why not road test them a few nights a week and
really put them through it. I think its a good test of a song if
you can, not completely re-invent it so that it sounds like a
completely cerebral action, but just to have a song that can exist
in several forms. If people wanted it, it would be quite nice to
record them that way, do 3 different versions. I do enjoy playing
live but it's everything that goes with it that's a pain, like
driving everywhere. We haven't played enough to know what it is
really like. Three weeks with the Microdisney's was quite hard
work, we were sleeping on floors and two of us were doing the
driving. There was a flat agency fee but that doesn't really
cover your expenses. Hotels are out of the question, you can just
about survive." If it's so bad why be in a band? "Sentimental
reasons, it's quite a sentimental thing to be in a band.
Otherwise, as a songwriter, you could work in any number of ways.
You could write songs, like Matt Johnson (The The) does, where he
just employs the people he needs to play on each song, and that's
why each song sounds completely different. There's no reason,
especially with the technology there is today, not that I have
access to it or am particularly interested in using it, why you
can't as a songwriter , basically orchestrate all your own songs,
where you don't really need anyone else. When a band stops being
the sum of it's parts, it's an excellent feeling which you can
only get through having a solid line up that think in the same
way as you."